Monday, 23 April 2012

St George's Day and Englishness: a few thoughts

In
the case of the latter, that means celebrations of some sort for the people of
many countries, since he is the patron saint of more than one nation – and
plenty of other things besides, including archers and sufferers of syphilis.

But
national days have little to do with the historic reality behind the saint in
question.

In
this case, there seems to be some confusion as to where he even came from,
although there is support for his having been a Roman soldier from Syria
Palæstina.

The
Catholic Encyclopedia is of the opinion that, while there
seems to be no ground for doubting the historical existence of St George, that
doesn’t mean that we should believe some of the more fanciful tales.

Which
conclusion struck me as showing a certain lack of self awareness.

But
the mythical nature of St George seems rather apt in many ways.

You
could start with the very nature of nationalism: anyone who really thinks that
the country they hail from is better than any other is daft – just as daft as
anyone thinking the reverse.

My
parents were very much in the camp of thinking that England was absolutely
finer than absolutely anywhere else on planet Earth. ‘God is an Englishman’,
they commented more than once – presumably, given their devoutly held religious
beliefs, without entirely meaning it.

So
convinced of this innate superiority are they that they have been rendered
incapable of actually seeing the satire in things such as Flanders and Swann’s
Song of Patriotic Prejudice – or even some of what WS
Gilbert wrote – and treat such songs with utterly gleeful relish.

Which
rather means that the joke is on them – even if they can’t understand this.

My
mother used to comment loudly – and god, how embarrassing it would be – when
people left the cinema before the national anthem was played.
We obviously had to wait – and stand for it.

Yet
in spite of growing up in such an atmosphere, I could never understand what it
was I was actually supposed to feel.

I
mean – why be ‘proud’ of where you’re from? Why would you take pride in
something over which you have had not an iota of control or influence?

It’s
as daft as being ashamed of where one comes from.

They
really are the two sides of a single coin.

It
took me years to work out what my own Englishness meant – and it has more in
common with that Flanders and Swann or Gilbertian strand of disguised satire.

Like
much English humour, they seemed to be either of the Establishment or at least
rather tame, yet the reality was more complex.

They
were observers, sitting slightly apart and recording the quirks of the English,
often with a slightly surreal edge.

The
same could be said of a vast number of talents, from Joyce Grenfell to Eddie
Izzard and Alan Bennett to Victoria Wood.

Equally,
I doubt my mother, for all her liking Shakespeare, is aware of many aspects of
the Bard’s writing.

Take
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance. It’s long struck me
as more than a tad amusing that it’s the first Shakespeare play that children
are introduced to.

It’s
about sex. An Elizabethan audience would have understood that Puck transforms
Bottom into an ass because the ass has a whopping big penis. That’s what it is
that attracts Titania when she sees him.

But
there are plenty of other myths about England and Englishness.

The
likes of John Betjeman and JRR Tolkien both helped popularise a particular
mythology during the 20th century.

For
both of them, England was the countryside: not the dramatic, romantic scenery
of the Lake District, for instance, but something far gentler: rolling downs
and pretty woods.

You
see this chocolate box idea in much of Betjeman’s poetry. And it’s no
coincidence that Tolkien labeled the part of Middle Earth that was under threat
and needed defending as The Shire.

There
was no place for industry or the inner cities – and they both pretty much wrote
them out of their visions of what constituted an ideal England.

You
could also mention St Mary Meade, home of Miss Jane Marple. But since Agatha
Christie’s sharp-minded old lady was always solving murders rather than sitting
in the garden, drinking tea from a bone china cup and doing the
Times crossword, it was hardly an idyll – however far
geographically from the encroaching obscenity of modern, urban life.

On
the other hand, Hercule Poirot most definitely disliked the countryside –
although perhaps that’s because he was furrin?

It’s
an England that did – or does – most certainly exist, and it has a powerful
hold on the collective imagination of many; perhaps particularly those of ‘a
certain age’ and a certain social background.

In
a speech to the Conservative Group for Europe, on (note the date) 22 April 1993,
the then Prime Minister John Major said: “Fifty years on from now, Britain will
still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible
green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said: ‘Old maids
bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’ and, if we get our way,
Shakespeare will still be read even in school.”

It’s
quite obvious that a lot of this is connected to class.

Grubby,
grimy, dirty industry was what the hoi polloi in the cities
and grim, industrial northern towns did.

The
middle classes built “invincible” suburbia to live as far as possible from the
inner city, if they couldn’t avoid working there.

Only
very recently has this trend started changing: now, living in the city so
trendy that the rising cost of even old council flats is driving out the people
who once were the only residents.

There
is a truth to the vision of Betjeman and Tolkien et al, and there is something
quite intoxicating about the picture that Major conjured up.

But
it is only one part of that truth; only one part of what constitutes England –
and a smallish part at that.

When
I travel to Bournemouth later this year for work, I’ll enjoy some of the sort of
scenery that Betjeman eulogised. But my own Englishness also incorporates the
landscapes of Lowry – and there, in a nutshell, may be the reason that he was
so shamefully treated by the country’s art Establishment: he recorded a world
that they didn’t want to see; that did not conform to ideas of what was ‘nice’
and acceptable: that could not be Art.

Betjeman
was a snob. Oh, he’s an enjoyable snob to read – his use of rhyme and rhythm
makes his work readily accessible – but there is poetry in the industrial and in
the north too: witness the work of the sublime Alan Plater and, as mentioned
earlier, Bennett.

And of course, that doesn't even touch on just what those grubby working types actually contributed to the country, which such snobs so conveniently forget.

But
going back to English humour, perhaps at our best, there’s a determination to
prick pomposity.

Think
of Will Hay, playing a double agent and being allowed to make repeated v signs
to a picture of Hitler in 1942’s The Goose Steps Out as he
‘educates’ would-be spies about English ways of showing respect.

But it's equally part of the greater picture that Hay's screen persona was that of a buffoon. He was hardly some heroic figure. And indeed, you see the same thing repeated in English culture, from George Formby to Norman Wisdom.

That
example came to mind again last week, when English Defence League founder Tommy
Robinson responded to a picture of the Taj Mahal on the Twitter homepage with
the following: “welcome to twitter homepage has a picture of a mosque. what a
joke #creepingsharia”.

Major
wasn’t entirely wrong when he also said: “Only in Britain could it be thought a
defect to be ‘too clever by half’. The probability is that too many people are
too stupid by three-quarters”.

But
quite apart from pointing out that the Taj Mahal is not a mosque, the
Twittersphere had enormous fun taking Robinson’s hashtag and sending it up
mercilessly.

Although the downside of this is that, in general, we also notoriously distrust
intellectualism. Public discourse suffers as a result – little wonder we
therefore have political (and other) ‘elites’ and that we canonise the thick.

See
Jade Goody – a troubled individual, exploited by the media and a voyeuristic public, who became a
celebrity for her stupidity, before being vilified for the same thing and then hailed
as a saint as she died in the public glare, desperate that the financial benefit that that
would bring would benefit her children.

England
at its best; England at its worst.

But
you can’t have everything.

On
a rather more down-to-earth level, I’m afraid today’s food hasn’t been
particularly English – with The Other Half away, I’m on an Italian kick
involving seafood and cheese and dishes he would not want to eat.

But
it could hardly have been more English on Saturday evening – well, British –
with English lamb chops, English asparagus and Jersey Royals from, err, Jersey.

However,
that’s not to say there wasn’t a little something to do to mark today.

Just
over a week ago, while wandering along Columbia Road, we were both handed what
appeared to be a rather knobbly, red business card.

In
fact, it turned out to be an invitation from the mayor of London to a St
George’s Day festival this weekend just gone.

But
the little cards themselves could be soaked overnight in water and then planted
in soil, since they contained seeds for English wild flowers.

Which
was an entirely nice idea – and I therefore saved them to soak and planted them
late this afternoon.

And
that’s exactly what I did.

Dressed
in jogging pants, a football shirt and a tweed cap (made in the UK), with a mug
of Earl Gray on the side, while another April shower pit-pattered down and,
between the steady growl of the city’s traffic, bird song filled the air, I
sowed a little bit of one England in a little corner of another England.

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London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
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